In the Name of Social Democracy by Gerassimos Moschonas

Author:Gerassimos Moschonas
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Verso Books
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

The Trend towards Decentralization

Thus, everything indicates a descending curve of centralized bargaining. Systems of national collective bargaining, bi- or tripartite, experienced their moment of glory in the 1960s and endured, despite tensions, for the next decade. They have since fissured.42

The reasons, which differ with the circumstances from country to country, have been extensively studied. They include:

(a) The strong rise of ‘white-collar’ unions (particularly in the public sector), and the contraction and growing fragmentation of the traditional working class, have led to a reduced role for trade-unionism as a national, cohesive and representative institution. The decline in inter-confederal concentration – very evident in the Nordic countries, but also in France and Italy43 – has played an important role in the crisis of centralized bargaining in the Scandinavian countries, the classical instances of corporatism.

(b) Strengthening in the labour-market position of the highly skilled and educated segment of the labour force – the ‘winners’ from technological change – has favoured the development of phenomena of ‘micro-corporatism’ and the establishment of more flexible systems of remuneration.44 This challenges solidaristic wages policies, which can only be managed centrally.

(c) The changed priorities of employers, who demand greater flexibility in the labour market (typically, wage cuts) in a context of intensified international competition, lead to a crisis of centralized tripartism. For some, employers are the major protagonist of the trend to decentralization.45 The expansion in diversified quality production tends in the same direction. Micro-bargaining in the framework of the firm – a framework that is now generally (but not invariably) advantageous to employers – encourages ‘differentiated, rather than uniform, responses’.46 This change is an important factor – for some, even the crucial causal factor – in greater decentralization. To put it simply: ‘many employers no longer view centralized bargaining as a good instrument for the control of wage costs’.47

(d) European integration diminishes the importance of ‘national fora’. Various aspects of economic and social policy become subject to regulation within the Union and are largely directed by it.

(e) The state’s increasing inability, during the crisis, to act as ‘guarantor’ of the benefits legitimately anticipated by the social partners in return for their conciliatory attitude constitutes an additional obstacle to corporatist integration.

(f) The end, in some countries, of prolonged social-democratic domination, and the advent of an era of frequent alternation (Scandinavia), or protracted confinement of socialists to opposition (Germany, United Kingdom), were not conducive to systems of centralized collective bargaining.

Thus, overall, everything points to the lesser stability and effectiveness of established corporatist systems, and a displacement of the centre of gravity of industrial relations systems to the sectoral level and the micro-level of firms.48 But the trend towards greater decentralization is not uniform, and the thesis of an ‘iron law’ of decentralization is unsustainable. National situations are very diverse; toing-and-froing between different levels of bargaining is now more frequent, as is government intervention.

However, if, among the countries examined here, we identify those that have displayed the greatest centralization in the postwar period (Sweden, Denmark, Netherlands, Norway), only Norway partially retains a centralized structure of wage-bargaining, albeit in markedly more unstable form.

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